Sam Mendes has compared the James Bond film series to the Doctor Who franchise.
The Skyfall director said that the way in which each Doctor regenerates into a new character is similar to each incarnation of Bond.
The comparison arose when Mendes discussed the one-off George Lazenby Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which he compared to Skyfall in terms of making James Bond more "human" and closer to Ian Fleming's novels.
Speaking about the 1969 film, he told Collider: "It's commonly considered a neglected classic, and I think it is. I think it's where you see him, as a character, pushed to the edge because he does fall in love and he loses her.
"I think that Lazenby was dealt a pretty cruel hand because he was following [Sean] Connery who they just did a home run the first time they got to bat. And then they asked him to do strange things which I thought spoke a little bit of their insecurity, for example, right at the beginning, he turns to camera and says to camera, 'That wouldn't happen with the other guy'.
"They were playing almost embarrassment, almost apologised for having a new Bond and I thought that was wrong, and I thought what they got right was Casino Royale.
"There was a kind of 'We don't need Q, we don't need Moneypenny. We've got this character. We're going right back to basics. He's real, he's in a real situation. Let's start all over again'. I thought that was very refreshing."
He added: "That's why I mentioned the word in the press conference, 'regeneration' rather than 'evolving', because I feel it is like, you know, we have Doctor Who and I was brought up on the idea of Doctor Who, who at the end of his final episode, he dissolves and a new actor pops up and he regenerates and it's a whole other character.
"Sometimes it's an old man, sometimes it's a young man, but he just changes. I've always loved that idea."
Skyfall is due to be released on October 26 in the UK and November 9 in the US, starring Daniel Craig as James Bond and Dame Judi Dench as M alongside Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Javier Bardem and Ralph Fiennes.
